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www.postmagazine.com 16 POST NOVEMBER 2017 THOR: RAGNAROK he Marvel juggernaut continues to steamroll its way over the box office competition as the studio releases yet another offering from its Marvel Cinematic Universe — Thor: Ragnarok. The Thor franchise's two prior successes: 2011's Thor and 2013's Thor: The Dark World, collectively earned over $1.1 billion worldwide. The newest film, Thor: Ragnarok, surprisingly directed by indie filmmaker Taika Waititi, follows the God of Thunder (Chris Hemsworth) as he escapes from imprisonment on the other side of the universe. The adventure continues as he races to get back to Asgard to stop Ragnarok — the destruction of his homeworld and the end of Asgardian civilization — at the hands of an all-powerful and ruthless Hela, who also happens to be his sister. But with a pit stop along the way, in which he is captured yet again, he is forced into a deadly gladiator-style contest against his former ally and fellow Avenger — the Incredible Hulk! In front of the camera, Hemsworth is joined by stars Tom Hiddleston (The Night Manager, Kong: Skull Island), Cate Blanchet (Blue Jasmine, Carol), Idris Elba (Luther, Pacific Rim), Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park, The Grand Budapest Hotel), Tessa Thompson (Creed, Selma), Mark Ruffalo (Spotlight, The Kids Are All Right) and Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs, Nixon). Behind the lens, the Oscar-nominated Waititi (Flight of the Conchords, Eagle vs Shark) assem- bled a talented team that includes cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, ASC (Secretos del corazón, The Others); film editor Joel Negron (The Nice Guys, Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon), composer Mark Mothersbaugh (21 Jump Street, The Lego Movie) and VFX supervisor Jake Morrison, who also completed visual effects for Ant-Man, Thor and Thor: The Dark World, as well as The Avengers. Just weeks prior to the film's opening, as he was still putting the finishing touches on several scenes, Morrison spoke with Post at length about the film's visual effects. Morrison explains that the third installment "is a very different picture. For starters, we're going back to the comic source a lot more, sourcing a lot more of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby stuff and really getting into some of that initial artwork. We had Taika, who's an amazing secret weapon as well. An artist in his own right. It was incredibly exciting to sort of let him loose and see some of the stuff that he was putting together for these worlds. (See Iain Blair's interview with Waititi in "Director's Chair," page 9). "The fact that the whole thing is this intergalactic road trip really gave us the ability to put a fresh coat of paint on everything, Asgard included," he offers. "Not reinvent the wheel 100 percent, as there are landmarks that people will recognize from Asgard. But it'll look different." While Morrison's film credits also include Mission: Impossible II, The Deep Blue Sea and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, the UK native explains that he has unknowingly become a bit of a Thor authority. "I ended up working on all three Thor films, which was never a plan, but it just sort of happened. There was a moment when we were in prep on 'Thor 3' and we were in this board room, where these huge production meetings happen, and there's costume, special effects, stunt coordinators and I suddenly re- alized that people kept looking at me with all these questions about how Thor worked, how his powers worked, and I realized, 'Oh jeez, I have become an expert on Thor (laughs). That was never part of the plan, I promise you that, but it comes in handy." GOING DOWN UNDER Shooting for Thor: Ragnarok began in July 2016, after months of planning, and filmed mostly in Australia's Gold Coast, in the state of Queensland on Arri Alexa 65 cameras. The production was headquartered at Village Roadshow Studios in Queensland. Additional filming took place on more than three-dozen sets at the studio (in several of its nine sound stages, as well as on its back lot), and on-location in downtown Brisbane. Second unit photography also took place on Australia's Dirk Hartog Island and at several sites on New Zealand's South Island. Prior to the release of the film, Morrison ex- plained that even with all of the sets and location shoots, "I think that every frame of the film will, at some point or in some small way, go through the VFX department." A COSMIC ROAD TRIP Coming in at around 2,700 VFX shots, it looks like Morrison had predicted correctly. He told Post that the film is about "97 or 98 percent VFX." He says there's "not a rock unturned here. There are huge set pieces with fully-animated characters all the way down to motion-capture characters delivering lines. We visit multiple worlds, intersteller travel, space ships, huge-scale destruction. I think at the moment, it's clocking in as Marvel's biggest picture yet, in terms of just shot count. I think we're past Age of Ultron. It's a huge, behemoth of a picture and it's basically like a cosmic road trip, which means you never really go back to the same place more than once or twice. You just keep moving forward. It's a dream job for us because we get to turn the cre- ative tap on and just let all the juices flow." Morrison did point out that his one mandate from director Waititi was, "'Don't let all this technical crap get in the way of the fact that I like to shoot actors' performances, shoot long takes, shoot series and throw lines out and ad lib stuff and get the actors to impov.'" Morrison elaborates, "That's really the only thing he said to us is make it transparent and just make it so he never thinks about it." To pull off the VFX, the long-time Marvel veter- an brought quite the impressive team of studios along for the ride, with more than 18 houses in total contributing their talents, including Industrial Light and Magic, Framestore, Method, Rising Sun Pictures, Digital Domain, Double Negative, Legend3D and Iloura. "We went to Industrial Light and Magic to lever- age all of the Hulk work, of course. It would have been nuts not to. And then for our final battles, I went to Framestore in London. I've been trying to work with the studio for a long time — it's a really strong character house. It does everything from Guardians of the Galaxy to Paddington, which I T Hela's suit is digital in the fight scenes. ILM called on its past expertise in creating Hulk; The Third Floor prevised Surtur.